I'm a great fan of the short story. It's a form that allows a writer to get to the heart of the great issues of our time. As Jackie Kay, shortlisted for the National Short Story prize, said on the Today Programme only yesterday. As Hanif Kureishi (also on the shortlist) might have said, too, had he not been yanked off the air. In some sense, he must be pleased. To have written a short story that is too dangerous for broadcast ... now that is an achievement. That is proof that short fiction has a future.

Sadly, so does censorship. We like to think that we are too advanced - too democratic! - for that nasty practice. That what we do instead is to observe common decency. This is what the BBC would like us to believe it had in mind when it decided that Kureishi's story would be too upsetting. Just for now, you understand. When the "timing" is right, they might take our pulse again.

This is doubly dishonest. First they ban the story and then they try to convince us that actually, they haven't. First they broadcast wall-to-wall coverage of 1001 Baghdad bombs, and then they say we're too delicate to consider the same hell from a different angle. But isn't that what art is meant to do - challenge received opinion and make us think?

If this had happened in a place like Turkey, we'd all be shaking our heads. "There they go again," we'd be saying. "How do these people ever think they're going to get into Europe if they carry on like this?" As we drafted our petitions, we would seek to remind people that free debate is what makes a democracy healthy, and that curbs on discussions of matters that some might "find upsetting" almost always serve to protect the state.

So when Turkey prosecutes its best-known writers and journalists for daring to mention the Armenian genocide, we are not in any doubt they are doing so not just to suppress the historical truth, but to punish all those who might challenge their authority. But here in Britain, the censor's art is ... yes, that's the word ... nicer. Everything is done on behalf of a public that no one wants to upset. We are encouraged to think that the nice people at the BBC don't really want to hide anything from us. And so the point is lost.

No, of course it is not as bad here as it is in a country like Turkey. But we do have censorship, and the more we condone it, the more we wrap it up in sheepish clothing, the more we convince ourselves that it is the only way to fend off the wolves, the more of it we'll see.